Peggy Shepard Raises Concern of Cumulative Effects in the Weakening of NEPA in the Washington Examiner – July 15, 2020

In a July 15, 2020 article in the Washington Examiner on the Trump administration’s weakening of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), WE ACT for Environmental Justice’s Co-Founder & Executive Director Peggy Shepard noted that the changes would eliminate the environmental review process that provides vital information on the health impacts of these projects on local communities. She also pointed out that NEPA requires a review of the cumulative impact of projects, weighing the combined risks of all the projects and facilities in a given community, which is critical because they frequently are clustered in low-income communities and communities of color. While the project under review may not exceed pollution limits on its own, NEPA served as a safeguard to ensure that those levels, when combined with other local sources of pollution, would not expose the community to levels that put people’s health at risk. Read the Article